Glimpses
by occultmagic
Summary: Sometimes Jess Moore thinks she knows all there is to know about her wonderful boyfriend, Sam. But sometimes she sees glimpses of things in his eyes, flashes of a darker past that make her wonder how well she really knows him… [no spoliers past the pilot]


* * *

Title: Glimpses 

Summary: Sometimes Jess Moore thinks she knows all there is to know about her wonderful boyfriend, Sam. But sometimes she sees glimpses of things in his eyes, flashes of a darker past that make her wonder how well she really knows him…

A/N: First one shot and first dabble into the wolrd of Supernatural! Please be kind :D

* * *

Jess first notices Sam Winchester in Art History class. She's well aware that most guys only take the course to meet girls, but then, most girls only take the class because they know the guys in it are out to meet girls. 

Her friends are busy eying up a hottie on the front row, but Jess finds herself drawn to the tall, shy figure that is Sam, sat on the edge of a row near the middle of the theatre. It's his hands, she decides, his strong, purposeful hands that scrawl his notes with a finesse that belies their workmanlike appearance. They are the hands of an artist, she thinks, someone who forges their life with the skill contained within his limbs.

She's surprised to hear he's a pre-law.

Jess next notices Sam at a party. He's with a few friends, having quiet drinks, and Jess decides to wait til she can catch him on his own and talk to him.

"You go for it girl," her roommate says, "he's a cutie, and smart too – got in with a full ride."

It takes a long time for him to be on his own, so Jess settles for watching him. She decides his hands aren't the only attractive thing about him (besides his appearance of course) it's the way he holds himself. To Jess it seems like he is aware of every inch of his being and can't help wondering what it would be like to have him aware of every inch of hers.

In the end it's Sam who finds Jess on her own. He approaches as she's buying drinks for her friends. They hit it off straight away.

On their first date, Sam takes Jess to a café for breakfast. They chat over pancakes and coffee. They ask each other all the typical 'get to know each other' questions.

"Favourite class?" Jess asks Sam.

"Art history," Sam says, and they both laugh, as they know the other only took the class to meet potential dates.

"Shouldn't laugh really," Jess says, "Art History seems to be doing us both well so far."

"Yeah," Sam agrees, treating her to one of his genuinely happy smiles, "family?"

"Older brother," Jess says, "perfect suburban family. Parents still married, one boy one girl. You?"

"Also an older brother, not so perfect suburban family though," Sam says, and laughs to himself about something.

"You guys always getting into fights?"

"Fights…" Sam says, raising his eyebrows, but not at her, at some memory she can tell he's not going to share just now.

Just as the silence that follows is about to turn awkward, Jess does a clumsy thing and knocks her knife onto the floor. Between laughing at her own clumsiness and apologising for being such a klutz, she bends down to pick it back up.

"I've got it," Sam says, getting there first.

His long arms reach the knife easily. He picks it up and for a moment he grips it like a weapon, and the hands Jess thought belonged to an artist suddenly seemed to belong to a killer. The ripple of the muscles from his fingers to his wrist, coupled with a glimpse of darkness in his eyes, spell a different art to painting or construction, and briefly Jess fears he will take the blade and stab it into her chest. Then his hand relaxes and he passes her the knife, handle first as is safe and polite, and Jess curses her wildly active imagination.

For a few weeks they go on dates. Sam is the perfect gentleman and always pays, but Jess feels like they are going nowhere. She's starting to think he is more interested in her as a friend than a girlfriend.

She decides to take matters into her own hands when Hallowe'en comes round. It's the perfect chance for her to be sexy without being seen as slutty. An eye-catching outfit would either force him to see her as potential girlfriend material, or at least it would make it very obvious he wasn't interested at all.

She calls him up and asks him to go to a party with her, and for the first time since she met him he brushes her off.

"I dunno, Jess, I kinda hate Hallowe'en," he says.

Disheartened, Jess gets ready anyway, determined to have a good time without him. But as the party draws closer, she can't help thinking about Sam, and what she could do to convince him to come.

She decides to call on him at his room.

Jess bangs on Sam's door a little impatiently. She knows she is letting her annoyance get the better of her but in the heat of the moment she doesn't care.

He opens the door and is surprised to see her there, and a little taken aback by her outfit. As he glances over her, Jess sees a glimpse of something in his eyes, only this time it isn't darkness, it's lust.

He buries it quickly and asks her what she is doing there.

"I thought I'd come and ask why you don't want to come to this party with me," she says.

Sam is once again taken aback, only this time it's not her outfit but her anger.

"Jess, this has nothing to do with you, I just hate Hallowe'en, always have."

"Why?" Jess demands.

"I…" he can't explain, reinforcing Jess's belief that it's just an excuse.

"Sam, we've been going on 'dates' now for weeks and you've never even so much as held my hand! If you don't like me like that, that's fine, but just tell me…"

"Jess…" Sam tries to cut her off but she's got in her stride now.

"…because it's not fair to get my hopes up like this then make some poor excuse about not liking Hallowe'en!"

"You got your hopes up about me?" Sam asks, both surprised and delighted.

Now it's Jess's turn to be taken aback. She's surprised he hasn't realised she is that into him. She thought she had made it obvious.

"Listen, Jess," he says, taking her by the hand and leading her into his room, "I hate Hallowe'en because my Mom died on the second of November and I've never liked celebrating so close to the time she died."

For some reason Jess gets the feeling it's not the whole truth, but she knows better than to press it. It must have been hard enough for him to tell her as much as he has.

"As for our dates, I just didn't want you to think I was just some other guy who wasn't going to treat you with the care and respect you deserve," Sam continues, "I wanted you to know I was serious, and how much I really care about you."

And in that moment, Jessica Moore falls hopelessly and completely in love with Sam Winchester. She never goes to the party in the end.

The next time Jess finds herself in Sam's room she has a better look around. He's very much the bachelor, with his posters, empty bottles of beer in his bin and a general state of mess, but there are some things that don't seem to belong.

His computer is decorated with what look to Jess like tribal patterns, that he has clearly drawn on himself, and next to a picture of his family from when he was only a baby, hangs what looks to Jess a little like a dream catcher.

"What's this?" she asks, curious.

"My Dad had a friend who was into all that charm stuff," Sam explains, "it's a protection charm."

"To protect you from what?" Jess asks.

"Supernatural things," Sam says, and Jess thinks for a moment that he is trying too hard to smile casually. She puts it down to embarrassment.

"What like ghosts and stuff?" she asks.

"Exactly."

"Do they work?"

"If you believe in that kind of stuff then yeah, I suppose they do."

"Well, you'll have to get your Dad's friend to get me one of these," Jess says.

"Why, afraid of ghosts?" Sam teases, though there is a curious glint in his eyes as he regards her.

"Well, not really, but it is kinda pretty," she says, toying with the charm.

Sam leans forwards and unhooks it from where it is hanging, folding the string neatly and pressing it into her hand.

"Then you have it," he says, "it would look better in your room anyway."

"But then you wont be protected," Jess pouts playfully.

"I'd rather know you're protected any day," Sam says.

Jess slips the charm into her bag then turns and kisses him, and soon all thoughts of ghosts and the supernatural are gone, at least from Jess's mind.

Jess loves the way Sam always tries to protect her. He's tall, so most people think twice about starting on him, but Jess thinks that's probably all the advantage he has. She dreads to think what might happen if one of the burly drunks Sam put himself in the way of decides to try his luck.

She finds out six months into their relationship. It's the same routine as usual – some drunk soccer player celebrating a win with his team mates would suggest that maybe Jess would do better with a real man, rather than the beanpole she was with. Jess never bothers to point out to these idiots that to be a beanpole you had to be scrawny, and that was something Sam most certainly wasn't.

She tells him not to waste his time as politely as she can, but like most of the drunken idiots Sam has had to face off for her in his time, he didn't quit. Unlike most of the drunken idiots Sam has had to face off, he gets violent.

Jess feels his fist hit her face before she even realises he's going to hit her and staggers backwards in shock. He grabs a handful of her hair and Jess notices the cowards around her letting him get on with it. He's big, and they don't want to mess with him.

"Hey!" she hears Sam's voice as he taps on the man's shoulder.

Her hair is released as he turns to face Sam, apparently completely unafraid. That soon changes when Sam's fist connects hard with his face, sending him straight to the floor.

Jess watches as Sam glares down at him, and wonders if the sheer force of his hatred could be enough to set the drunk on fire. For a moment she believes that Sam could kill the guy, then he turns to her, eyes brimming with concern and the thought vanishes, along with the glimpse of darkness that prompted it.

"That was some punch," she says later, as he hands her an ice pack for her sore cheek, "you must have been in your fair share of fights."

Jess looks at him and once again she sees it, that darkness, hidden away in the depths of his eyes. It speaks to her of fights, bad ones, of things seen and done that haunt Sam. Jess is reminded of the war veterans, and wonders what Sam has done in his life that is as bad as the trenches or Vietnam. Then it vanishes again, leaving Jess wondering if she imagined it.

"Yeah, well, when you have an older brother you learn to look out for yourself," Sam says after a moment, gingerly dabbing her face with a cold flannel, cleaning up the blood.

Jess is aware she's staring, but can't seem to stop herself. She searches his eyes for a trace, a glimpse of what she was so sure she had witnessed, but finds nothing.

"Jess, are you ok?" Sam asks, concern spilling into his voice.

"I'm fine," she says, "face hurts is all."

Sam smiles sympathetically and apologises for not reaching her sooner. Jess dismisses his apologies, telling him it wasn't his fault. As Sam hugs her, she becomes convinced that she imagined the whole thing.

In the time they've been dating, Sam has never talked much about his family. He fields her questions, telling only what is absolutely necessary. Jess had spent a lot of time pondering over what had transpired between the Winchesters to cause the rift that existed, and was naturally surprised when Dean turned up at their house.

He hits on her a little, and Sam is clearly guarded, but Jess doesn't think it's about his brother's flirtatious attitude. He asks Dean what he wants, insisting that anything he has to say can be said in front of her.

"Dad was on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been back in a few days," Dean said, and there is a look in his eyes as he looks up at Sam that lets Jess know that something else is being communicated other than his words.

Whatever silent communication passed between them, it clearly spooks Sam.

"Jess, excuse us, we have to go outside," he says.

Jess wonders what could be so bad that Sam can't talk about it in front of her, what could be so bad that he has to leave in the middle of the night.

He makes up some lie about fetching their Father back from a hunting trip. Jess knows he's lying because that glimpse of darkness is in his eyes again. She wants to demand the truth, but some small part of her knows Sam is just doing what he has always done. He's protecting her.

On the third night Sam is gone, Jess bakes cookies to pass the time. She misses him more than she would have thought possible after just two days.

It gets late though, and Jess knows she can't stay up waiting for him much longer. He'll be back by Monday anyway. In case he returns later, she leaves him a little note in the bowl of cookies and makes her way to the bedroom.

As she changes, Jess hears someone moving around in the house.

"Sam?" she calls out, but gets no response.

She finishes brushing her teeth and returns to the bedroom. Her heart rises when she sees someone standing there but plummets where she realises it's not Sam.

"Hello Jess," he says, with a voice so terrifying Jess can't even scream, "we need to have a little chat about our mutual friend Sammy."

Jess tries to run, but the man raises his head and she finds herself pinned to the wall by some unseen force.

"You see Jess," he continues, walking closer as she struggles against the force pinning her to the wall, "I have a vested interest in our Sammy, and you are getting in the way of my plans for him."

Jess is beyond terrified as he walks right up to her, but as she looks into his inhuman yellow eyes a curious calm comes over Jess and suddenly she knows everything.

She can see Sam with his brother, fighting creatures she didn't believe existed outside of fairytales. Ghosts, demons, werewolves.

As she rises up the wall and slides onto the ceiling, Jess looks down t the thing below her and knows that every time she say a glimpse of darkness in Sam's eyes, it was him she seeing.

_Oh Sam_, she thinks when she sees him lie back on the bed they shared, _I'm so sorry._

He opens his eyes and gasps in horror as she bursts into flame.

_I'm so sorry…_

* * *

Et Fini

* * *

Please review :) 


End file.
